


Shadows

by rebecca_selene



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: F/F, Feminist Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebecca_selene/pseuds/rebecca_selene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of trying to kill Aurora, Maleficent offers her a way out of her arranged marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> written for my [](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/profile)[**picfor1000**](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/) Challenge #11 [picture prompt](http://www.flickr.com/photos/lomokev/4136587629/lightbox/) AND my [](http://otp-100.livejournal.com/profile)[**otp_100**](http://otp-100.livejournal.com/) [table](http://rebecca-selene.dreamwidth.org/94440.html) prompt “093. Dark” AND my [](http://darkfantasybingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**darkfantasybingo**](http://darkfantasybingo.dreamwidth.org/) [card](http://rebecca-selene.dreamwidth.org/96804.html) prompt “shadows”

Once upon a time, deep in the forest, three good fairies raised a princess away from the minions of an evil fairy, waiting until it was safe to bring the newly named Briar Rose back to her kingdom.

They failed.

For on the eve of Princess Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, after she had confessed to meeting a man in the forest, they told her the truth and brought her back to her castle. In the princess’ dressing room, Maleficent waited.

Aurora focused on Maleficent’s reflection in her mirror. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I am Maleficent, Mistress of all Evil.”

Aurora frowned, deepening the shadows under her eyes. “Have you come to kill me?”

“Are you alive?”

Aurora blinked. “Whatever do you mean?”

Maleficent swept her robes around herself. “I should think that she who has been directed and controlled all her life is not sufficiently living for me to…kill.”

“Directed and controlled?” Aurora replied shrilly, standing and turning to face the fairy. “I have been no such thing!”

Maleficent threw her head back and cackled. “Just answer me this one question: what is your name?”

Aurora opened her mouth. Then she shut it before any sound came out. Tears filled her eyes.

Maleficent nodded. “You were born a princess. That means you were born to be pampered and posed. You were born to be silent and to wed a prince. You were born to be his bride, to warm his bed at night and bear his children. And to do it silently, no matter your wants or pains.”

“No,” Aurora whispered.

“Yes. But I can offer you more.” Maleficent held out her hand. “Come with me, and you’ll never doubt who you are.”

Aurora backed away. “No,” she repeated. She ran down the steps, emerging into the large ballroom. Bodies jostled against her, and she swayed.

“Princess!”

She raised her head to see a man wearing princely garb rushing toward her, eyebrows knit in concern. Hope swelled in her chest: surely such attention couldn’t be the kind of prison the evil fairy had suggested.

Courtiers whispered around her. “Don’t worry, princess. Your husband-to-be is coming for you.”

“The prince will fix what ails you.”

“Yes, it’s Philips’ duty to preserve you.”

Aurora’s hope faded into confusion. Fix her? Preserve her? She turned away from Philip’s approaching form and sped out into the garden.

“Aurora, princess, wait!”

Hoping to lose him, Aurora left the path, relying on her familiarity with the forest to navigate through the foliage. Brambles caught at her skirt, holding her back; rose bushes seemed to rise out of nowhere, thorns packed tightly together.

She ran blindly, aware only of the sound of Philip’s voice fading behind her until it disappeared.

Aurora stumbled and fell, sobbing. Her skin burned, thin rivulets of blood dripping down her arms from the briars’ thorny embrace.

Why had she ever thought her name was beautiful? Briar Rose, the name her aunts…no, the fairies…had forced upon her from birth. To save her from the evil fairy Maleficent, they’d said. To save her to marry a prince, they’d said. Aurora cried out then, a wordless protest of her lifelong imprisonment.

From her shadow on the ground, a hideous beast appeared.

“A gift for you, my maiden fair,” it said. “A rose of the reddest red. And what will you give the Mistress of all Evil in lieu of your maidenhead?”

Aurora took the proffered rose, the namesake she thought she had born. She looked down the broken path she had made. She looked at the rose in her hand. For the first time in her life, she had been given a choice.

She pricked her thumb on the thorn. Her other wounds healed shut, her blood on the vine sealing the contract between her and Maleficent.

The beast cackled in triumph. Aurora stood and watched her shadow spread over the ground, beating back the rose bushes, breaking into smaller shapes that wriggled as if with pent-up energy. The beast who had delivered his mistress’ message faded back into the ground among its brethren.

Wide-eyed and paralyzed, Aurora gazed in awe as the central shadow grew wider, spreading across the castle’s now unrecognizable garden while the smaller, beastly shadows danced out of the way. This giant shadow melted up from the ground, black oozing upon black until it towered above her.

But Aurora was not afraid. This creature was her doing; this creature was bound to the blood-drenched vine in her hand. Aurora smiled at the power she felt, and two green slits opened in the shadow’s form.

“What is your name?” the creature asked in a booming voice that made the castle’s stone walls shudder.

“My name.” Aurora clenched the rose tightly. “My name is Aurora. Mistress of Shadows.”

A great uproar sounded amongst her minions, and the creature’s eyes narrowed in approval. “And what is thy bidding, Mistress of Shadows?”

Aurora’s smile grew, the power almost making her dizzy. “Freedom.”

“And how will you gain it?” the creature guided.

“By taking it. Go!” she cried, waving her arms at her minions. “Go, be free! Go and play!”

The shadows took off through the castle, spreading havoc and meeting with screams. They pulled women’s hair, stole men’s swords, flung food and drink around the ballroom where the courtiers had gathered to watch her be given as a bride like a trophy. Four minions carted off a bellowing Prince Philip. To a dungeon, to a precipice, she knew not where, only that it wasn’t her marriage chamber.

The green-eyed creature spread its wings and flew, biting at human figures, crumbling castle towers, and burning the rose bushes with its fiery breath. Aurora watched in grim satisfaction as her past blazed away before her. She went back into the castle, up to her chambers, and with the thorny rose clutched against her chest, fell into a deep sleep.

And when she woke, she crowned herself queen of the land where her shadows had come to stay.


End file.
